I backed this project because I believed it had the potential to be something HUGE! I am not upset that I was correct. With the new "backer" I hope you're able to push this technology at hyper speed. I'm excited to be 1 of the 9,522 people that get to say they "backed" a project that will change the way humans see the world.

The amount of short sighted ignorance and narrow minded stupidity here is ridiculous. It seems it really is true that there are only two types of people here, the ones with the intelligence and foresight to move their industry forward and the ones too stupid to do anything other than complain about things they obviously don't understand.
.
I for one am excited for Oculus and what the increased budget and support means for the technology and am really looking forward to seeing any new hardware developments at E3.

I wanted to post this because there are many negative comments, and just want to make the people know that not all the Kickstarter backers are as angry as the media has painted us, and i'm sure that i'm not the only one that feels this way.

I'm more than satisfied with my pledge, actually this has been the best KS campaign that
I've pledged to. They didn't only deliver the rewards, they also have been keeping us updated, even if the Kickstarter campaign ended over one and a half years ago!

Give all 9,522 of your original backers a free official Oculus when it releases. That will shut us all up. We'll let you keep your $2b with no complaints. Think about it. Facebook could front the cost and that would be no sweat off their back.

Well a little over a week has passed since the sellout of oculus, and I've been contemplating the whole ordeal a lot since then.

I won't say that I can't understand it, the largest amount of money I've ever seen is about 2.000$ I can't even imagine what 2.000.000$ looks like let alone 2.000.000.000$,
Or 1.898.000.000 as I suppose it's closer to now that fb's stock came tumbling down, still an insane amount of money.
I'm not sure if I'd have the integrity to decline had I been in your stead, but I hope so.
Btw, I think congratulations are kindof in order, I think this must set some kind of new record, 9522 people zuckerburged at the same time, and even with the help of the master himself, that's kind of impressive in a sort of macabre way.

*nyway, *uckey and *uckerburg both say that this won't change anything for oculus, but facebook doesn't exactly have the greatest of track records when it comes to buying companies and keeping them open.
They've been buying and merging since around 2007 (according to wiki they've done so with +40 companies by now), yet in the speech to the fb shareholders mark admitted that fb didn't actually have any experience with running internal companies like that.
Also they are publicly owned, which means an almost religiously fanatic adherence to the bottom. So when the money says jump, you jump.

It's pretty clear who the winners here were, but I think the real looser is kickstarter, admittedly money centric news sites has called this good news for kickstarter,
proof the kickstarter model works, but honestly I'm not seeing it. The model isn't "schmucks take all the risks of investing in startups without a chance for a return, so 'accredited' investors can later swoop in and take all the money".
The idea behind kickstarter is small projects circumventing the man and making their own fortune, that's why project creators are allowed to make tiers with no content, like the "10$ special thanks" tier on the oculus rift page.
And that is also why projects are allowed to fail. If it was a shop, where you pre-ordered goods, then project creators would be forced to deliver, even if the project failed.
And I believe that's also why backers feel so betrayed, they invested time and money in the team and in the idea, now the team has turned their back on the idea and sold it of to some huge "creepy" corporation that is known for it's unethical practices and disregard for their customers.
That doesn't garner trust in the model, it garners distrust, so while rich people are talking about the golden age of kickstarting many active backers are talking about leaving.
I don't know if said rich people were planning on taking over and throwing their own money at it or they were just hoping to watch from the sidelines, like hungry vultures, but it doesn't seem viable either way.
I for one probably won't be using kickstarter much if at all after this.

Then there is the question of the future for vr, this is something that I've especially been thinking about, I don't think it's going away,
there's clearly an interest in it, and many companies are creating their own versions, sony and microsoft to mention a few.
And now that oculus have alienated many of their earlier followers that probably means many people are looking for alternative companies, it seems highly unlikely that there will be another grassroot product to get behind,
so it will probably end up in people just dispersing to products of different larger corps that aren't facebook, sure some will probably stay with the rift, but I have no idea how few..
After all, microsoft, sony, etc. are all fairly equally distrusted, fb is far more distrusted than any of them and oculus just backstabbed their backers 2b$, that's a lot of emotional bullshit tied up in the rift, for quite a lot of people.

There is however one thing that has bugged me.. putting on a helmet in the name of escapism, I can see that working, that's a dream for most nerds/geeks,
being able to actually be inside the game, rather than just looking at it through a flat screen in front of them, but how many people would put on a helmet in order to use social media. I really doubt social rifting will catch on, but who knows.

Lastly, many backers have been asking for refunds, stocks and cv1's for the original backers as compensation,
now first of all, publicly traded companies aren't exactly noted for being generous when they don't have to, they have shareholders to appease, which makes the bottom line God.
And shareholders don't like the sight of money being given away when they can't see the purpose (even if appeasing the livid masses would probably be pretty good from a pr perspective).
Refunds, they aren't contractually obliged to do that, and they probably won't.
Stocks, I'm not an american, but from my understanding it's not legal for "poor people" to own stocks, apparently for their own protection.... yea..
cv1, well as with the other two, i highly doubt it's going to happen.

Are they legally bound to do any of them? No, morally, ethically, perhaps. But really, we are schmucks and idiots to believe in even garage hackers on kickstarter, they legally owe us nothing, their little grift of a rift played out nicely and they can laugh all the way to the bank, while many of us are left with nothing but merch for something we no longer believe in, or just pure disdain.
I'm just glad that I'm a poor student, so I couldn't afford to throw much after them, except my time evangelizing, I feel really sorry for those of you who burned more than I did though =/
Anyway, I'm out, this is probably the last I'll ever have anything to do with oculus.
Good bye and thanks for all the fish, it was fun while it lasted.

Really, think about it. $3M, maybe less since it's at your cost, and it would be all over the internet about how great you were for actually appreciating your backers, and a good portion of us would think you're awesome again, think about the effect of thousands of the most early adopter VR enthusiasts loving or hating Oculus, and telling everyone so. Besides that great and huge publicity, we were the ones willing to spend $300 of our money to develop on this thing, the passionate independent ones are the ones you want building up a nice library of games and code.

For the record my mind is changed and I agree this aquisition was the only right move. I have absolutely no regret backing this project, and I'm more hyped than I've ever been. To all those naysayers: if you don't want your shirt, can I have it?

For the record my mind is changed and I agree this aquisition was the only right move. I have absolutely no regret backing this project, and I'm more hyped than I've ever been. To all those naysayers: if you don't want your shirt, can I have it?

All the Facebook haters, here is a (very cynical) way of looking at it from a positive direction:

For VR to work it needs a perfect display and such good tracking and low latency that it does not induce motion sickness. These are hardware problems they *need* to crack for people to be able to use it. It's in the best interest of Facebook to make it work because a headset that makes people motion sick is worthless to them. So even if Facebook manages to force Oculus to turn it into a blue headset with Like buttons on the side, VR technology on the whole will benefit. Like many other products there will be competition, and other manufacturers will be able to copy solutions that Oculus finds.

That said, I honestly believe that Oculus chose this because they think it is the best way to realize their goal. I really hope the Facebook money hose allows them to make a version with a much higher resolution. I ordered a Dev Kit 2.0 this morning, because I really want to try the positional tracking.

We want VR to be huge and this will ensure it with all the money and the hype around this sale. Facebook are not the devil, they are a company trying to make money. I for one am proud to have backed this and other VR related projects.

Hey, congratulations on the deal. I always hoped that this project would someday succeed in a gigantic way. I kind of imagined that if and when the Rift made it big you might take us along for the ride. Some of us are just as much the "small guy" as you once were, and we all have dreams of our own. I guess I was being naive, but best of luck anyway.

SPECIAL THANKS: Help us take gaming to the next level! You'll receive a sincere thank you from the Oculus team and we'll keep you up to date on all of our progress developing the consumer Rift and building out the developer SDK!
Estimated delivery: Oct 2012"

So how many of you $10 backers are nice and up to date on the progress of the consumer Rift?

I'm a fairly minor backer, got a nice t-shirt. There is a natural temptation to look at what Facebook does and assume the worst. Looking at it logically Facebook did not buy Oculus to put adds on it - the numbers make no sense. There are currently zero commercial users of Oculus, unlike say WhatsApp which has about half a billion. There would be no benefit to either party to slap adds and the Facebook brand onto Oculus at this time.

Facebook doesn't want to be caught out when a new platform explodes onto the scene, as it almost was with mobile and it doesn't want to let competitors own the VR space. It genuinely imagines a future where shared social spaces might become the next big thing. If that's going to happen, it will happen anyway - Oculus is after all an open platform. This just means Facebook gets in on the ground floor.

At the moment I see no reason not to take Oculus at their word that this will not impact their plans for the gaming side of things. Time will tell of course, but personally I think they have earned the right to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Having said that, there are many here who contributed a lot more than me and it's understandable if you feel this is not what you signed up for. If you are suspicious of Facebook, don't like what they do or have political or moral reservations about what they stand for you are perfectly entitled to express your disappointment. As someone who has run a successful Kickstarter campaign I feel there is a responsibility to keep backers informed and a part of the process. In hindsight I'm sure Oculus realise they could have handled this a little better.

My personal dislike for facebook aside, I still feel that the DK2 will be an incredible platform to experiment with. I have no plans to cancel my pre-order at this time. I had and continue to have high hopes for VR and its potential to revolutionize many different forms of media consumption: from Gaming, to Movies, to education, to Healthcare, all the way to 'VR "Bubble" Workstations' (For us hackers), and the many new spaces it will create. FB got a steal at $2B, given the time and hard work needed this tech has the potential to be so much bigger. But today Oculus remains the front runner in personal HMD (at a reasonable cost, and open source). And while I do have my reservations about the FB acquisition I still feel that the Oculus team (backed by strong indie developers) is our best bet at the realization of OUR shared dream of amazing VR (hopefully open source).

I am a minor backer and afte rI had ordered DK2 I hate to see Oculus join facebook.
Facebook is something I hate from the bottom of my heart (never joined it) .. the news totally ruined my day and I'm thinking of canceling my pre-order.

If you search around the web, you'll find out that there are many companies and indies working on Games for the Oculus, Oculus is still supporting them, and no one stops 'em from creating their own original gaming content.

Wow, I’m really torn on this. First off I’m kind of glad they have a bunch of investment to make great VR gear. However, they had already secured funding before this deal. I’m also bitterly disappointed. I invested in a gamer hardware project, not a giant privacy violating corporation. Can you imagine the user agreement that is going to accompany any Oculus software or driver. They are going to sell all the data they collect on what people view through the headset. Wow, I feel betrayed. I’m reluctant on buying the second kit now. It is not me and the community supporting a game changing upstart, but a giant wealthy uncaring corporation using our hard earned money to do its development work for it. I could even stomach that, but when I know they will not have the integrity to secure the personal data of the community that funded the birth of the technology, that is something I can’t feel good about supporting. I guess we have to see what Avegant, and castAR come out with. I could still get behind it if the Oculus team came out in print stating that all future Oculus products would have a strict privacy policy, something I doubt I’ll ever see.

@Drew Madsen: Honestly, i prefer a million times that a company like Facebook bought them over the other two companies you mentioned:

* If Micro$oft would own Oculus, they would have the power to close all the source and make the project "Windows only" or "xBox only", they could have the power to prevent the Oculus to be able to run on the Steam Machines / Mac / Linux or on any other HW that wasn't MS branded.

* EA on the other hand would have the power to ban the indie competition by asking for high royalties or licensing fees.

I don't know what people expected from backing this project that they want their money back, but at least I hoped that backing this project would help bringing the attention of game / software developers and other companies to the VR scene, and so that they could make the Rift an affordable consumer product. Today we have the DK2 and a soon to come CV1, lot's of projects in development in relation to VR, including lot's of other VR consumer headsets like the Morpheus, the Dive, the vrAse, and others, lot's of advancement in relation to VR controller systems like STEM / Omni / PrioVR / Tactical Haptics, and also lot's of games and software in development (and some ready and just waiting for the CV1), from my point of view, I got back a lot more than what I payed for and with Facebook financing Oculus there is still a lot more to come.

I am saddened that the independent dream that was Oculus is now selling out to Facebook. Honestly, I feel that every single donor should get a "kickback/refund" from that $2 Billion (they'd still have plenty left over!) to put towards a kickstarter project that isn't a masquerading golddigger. The whole idea of Kickstarter is to support people in making the world a better place through original ideas and technology, not selling out to corporate America. We already have enough politicians that do that - and you see how good that's worked out for the country. A shame and dissapointment to everyone who backed Oculus; it's a damn shame.

I'm happy for them to keep my money. People don't like facebook (hell I don't really like facebook) but the other businesses facebook has bought in the past haven't changed one bit... instagram and whatsapp aren't doing anything that people are claiming this will mean for VR so I hope everyone can stop and think about this in a non-emotional way.

Them getting bought out was a forgone conclusion from day 1, perhaps people didn't realise this and that's where the anger comes from?

At the end of the day, this gives them the cash they need to make this stuff go mainstream... so I'm cool with it and I'm just damn glad they didn't get bought out by someone with a vested interest in a single platform.

This is not what I backed this project for. Seriously not. I hope Kickstarter will learn from this and find ways to prevent such abuse of their platform in the future. You lost a lot of credibility due to this. And Oculus? Oh well ... RIP.

Microsoft at least has Hardware production connections and experience that could benefit Oculus VR. Both have in house personal experienced with developing game engines. Facebook has......umm...marketing, data-mining?

Valve would have been the best solution, since they want VR too, and I'd actually believe they wouldn't hinder the rift development.

After reading all the comments, I think everyone of us has to remember how Oculus started:

A pure product born directy from the minds of dreamers, with Palmer at his head, defying the whole gaming industry to take a leap forward and launching it to the future science-fiction dreamed of. 75.000 of us supported it at kickstarter, helping it happen, and many more were fascinated after seeing and trying it.

-The guy you are attacking today with rage is the same that made the Oculus exist. Without him today we wouln't see any trace of quality VR in the near future.-

I think Palmer and his team deserve a lot of credit and faith for what they have already achieved.

If the Oculus only is the catalyst to start the VR revolution, it would have been great already. It has already brought to life something that can only grow. I'm sure it won't stop here. As I'm sure that sony, microsoft and valve will show their VR kits soon.

Today we dislike Palmer's choice and it seems the end of the VR Dream. I have that feeling too, but that's simply naive. When finished VR Sets are availiable, the only important thing will be the quality/comfort of the display and the presence you can achieve with them. We would give a shit whose product is. What we want is the best VR system for the best games possible.

With that in mind, we have to admit the truth about Oculus: despite all the hype and all the love we gave it, once that microsoft/sony and even valve increase their interest in VR, Oculus would have a very difficult fight to survive all alone only as a peripheral developer against a more populated market and against industry monsters.

Maybe with the funds and support of a major company they are going to be able to compete when the true competition starts. Anybody is a fan of facebooks philosophy, but almost everybody uses it.

If it can help real gaming VR grow, or open the way to interesting experiences maybe its a good thing. Specially with the original team intact.

If this its about messing with patents, putting ads in every fucking place of a mech game, and spying on everybody's virtual porn habits. GO TO HELL. Until then, have some faith in this incredible, super-talented team that already made our dreams come true.

-Bakers: we do not own the company or shares, we helped to give it life because we wanted VR to happen. It already happened.

-Oculus: loses its beautiful newborn reputation by association, but wins a lot of money to buy lamborghinis and more mediums to accomplish its dream.

-Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg wins technology to spy on virtual porn users' habits, connecting your grandmother with your virtual girlfriends and putting the like button in every virtual planet that will exist on the future.

the true damaged:

-Kickstarter and crowdfunding: From now one you can think that you fund someone's project to make them sell it to a company before finishing it. But you can consider that you can start a project here and sell it to facebook for 2000 millions, not bad.

I backed the Oculus KS campaign too, giving $300 to it. I paid for a few things:
- the prototype, of course,
- the idea that I could take part in what I considered to be a revolution,
- the idea that I was giving my confidence to a team of independent people that would prove to the world that industrial/technological revolutions could be led by people

Facebook is not evil, it's a company. A company that invested 2 billion dollars in Oculus. Don't fool us. Even if you don't admit it today, you've lost your freedom. You've lost your soul.

You annihilated every single beautiful ideas your project carried. But you're rich now.